If it is true that many who call themselves Christians are merely professors and not possessors of eternal life, then one of the major causes must be a misunderstanding of sin. The enemy’s oldest trick is to minimize sin. He tries to reduce our sense of the severity of disobedience. He plays down the harm of rebellion by calling it anything but rebellion; he hides the reality of sin’s consequences and judgment.

Sadly, but interestingly, many modern preachers do the same. When preachers avoid the subject of sin altogether, as many do today, the result is a good many false Christians. In modern preaching, the word sin is taboo or redefined, and the act of sin is tolerated by both pulpit and pew. The wicked are soothed and made to feel no alarm. The moment someone is troubled about his soul’s jeopardy, he is consoled and told how wonderful he is and how much God loves him. Grief over sin is as unwanted as the plague in most church buildings.

The one thing that must precede true salvation is a biblical understanding of sin. We must see sin the way God sees it. It must reek with the foul odor it truly has and not be fumigated by a lying preacher’s lips. Until the sinner sees and feels the ownership of his sin he will not see the need for his conversion. Until the terribleness of sin grips his heart, any conversion he seeks will be the assurance of his eternal safety without deliverance from sin. The word salvation will only mean escape from judgment. It will never be equated with the saving from sin itself.

But when a sinner is made to realize his absolute unworthiness and reprehensibility, when he is made to know his utter wickedness, then he will see Jesus in an entirely different way. Christ will become more than attractive; He will become a necessary Savior without whom the sinner will perish, and perish deservedly. When sin becomes real to a man he finally understands his good works are a sham. To see sin as it really is motivates the convinced heart that there is no hope and smashes all places of refuge where the sinner might hide himself in self-righteousness.

Charles Spurgeon affirmed this principle when he said,

In the beginning, the preacher’s business is not to convert men, but the very reverse. It is idle to attempt to heal those who are not wounded, to attempt to clothe those who have never been stripped, and to make those rich who have never realized their poverty. As long as the world stands, we shall need the Holy Ghost, not only as the Comforter, but also as the Convincer, who will ‘reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.’

This goal is not accomplished by treating people like filth and nitpicking their faults, constantly telling them how wrong they are. But the subject of sin cannot be bypassed; for the sake of the sinner we must address it. Rather than trying to appease the non-believer let us hold before him the truth about the perfect righteousness of God. Let men see the infinite holiness of Christ and His sinless nature. Clearly declare the Lord’s royal robes of righteousness in order to expose their filthy and threadbare rags. Compare men to Him who knew no sin but became sin for us. Make men to know His beauty and purity, and surely they will know their ugliness and sin. And when they know and own their sin, they will make their way to the Savior and desire to know and own Him as their own righteousness.

The knowledge of the divine reveals the truth about sin and the sinner. If Satan’s work is the downplaying of sin, then surely it is the work of the preacher to show the exceeding sinfulness of sin by magnifying the exceeding greatness of God. This is the kind of preaching God owns. If we fail in this, then all we can expect are more false converts.

And you never have the right to redefine sin for yourself. That is the sorcery of those who are the spitting image of Satan. God DID say…

Thanks Beck. ❤ I found this especially convicting. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the repentance corner….. 😦

“Christian love does not undervalue or disregard natural family ties; it gives them their due importance and condemns those who are without natural affection.” – David Hiebert

“It is so burdensome to me when I want to preach about something like love because it forces me, when I look at the text, to look at the mirror of my own life and see how small my love, how inconstant my love truly is.” – Paul Washer

This seems to only be found on I’ll Be Honest, home of many excellent resources:

In this brief excerpt Paul gives some brief thoughts on loving our lost family members.

The reason why men indulge any one lust is,—because they pick and cull their duties, and so indeed serve not the will of God, but their own choice. O! how many are there that answer the Lord with half obedience! like the echo, which makes not a perfect respondence of the voice, but of some part thereof. Many make such a difference amongst the tables [of the Decalogue], as if only one side or one part were of God’s writing. O sirs! this will not do, this will undo. The man that, like Agrippa, doth but almost believe, almost repent, almost conform to the will of God, that man shall be saved proportionably almost! One sin unrepented of will cause you to miscarry to all eternity. One crack in a bell may make it unserviceable, untunable; and till it be new-cast, it is good for nothing. One wound may kill your bodies, and so may one sin your souls. O Christians! what had become of you and me, if Jesus Christ had satisfied the justice of God for all but one sin? . . . . No mercy to be expected from this scripture, unless a man turn away from all his transgressions. The vessel of honour is distinguished from the vessel of dishonour, by this character, that it is “sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use, and prepared unto every good work,” (2 Tim. 2:21) . . . . Halting in religion is a troublesome, deformed, dangerous gesture; and there is no cure for this like cutting-off the right foot.

A much needed post. Personal truth…I have seen just how pride and those in bondage to it, destroys. It destroys relationship with God, it destroys relationship with people, and in my case, it has destroyed all pretense of marriage. While pretense is a good thing to have to face because there is no truth in pretense, how that pretense has been cultivated, set up and administered is heartbreaking. It is when it is your sin and you must face it, and it is when you realize that the one you had your hope in as a spouse can never even be a friend. All because of pride. God’s word is truth. It does lead to a great fall. And it does destroy. Original sin…and the hallmark of Satan. May God smash all pride and regenerate every heart held captive by it in genuine, broken, devastating repentance and full surrender to Christ as Lord. Anything less is nothing more than seeking freedom from guilt, a better life, feelings of “peace”, and every selfish thing under the sun. And hollow spirituality is no substitute for true righteousness gained only through God granting the humility to truly repent and stop seeking Him for what one can “get” in that seeking, but to seek Him as the only One who can break the psychotic slavery of the prideful heart that, when you get right down to it, doesn’t love Him or anyone else but themselves. And in the end shall reap their own destruction.~AGM†

A prideful person “does not seek the Light of God. You can often notice that if a man has a high opinion of himself, he is extremely good and excellent and does not need to be saved by Grace. He does not want to be told too much about himself. He likes to go to a place of worship where they prophesy very smooth things and if he ever strays in where there is very plain talk, he says that the preacher is too personal. The Hindu thinks it is wicked to kill an insect, or to take life of any kind—and that he will surely not enter into his happy paradise if he does. When the missionary showed a Hindu, by means of a microscope, how many living creatures there were in a single drop of the water which was in a glass on the table, in order to convince him of the impossibility of avoiding the destruction of life if he drank the water, what did the Hindu do? Why, he smashed up the microscope! That was his way of answering it! And so, sometimes, if the Truth of God is put very plainly so that men cannot escape from the force of it, not wishing to know the uncomfortable Truth, they turn upon their heels and find fault with the preacher and refuse to hear any more from him!”

We are the microscope. We show the truth of the hidden manna. We point the eye toward the hidden kingdom. Some will not even look through the lens! Others who dare to peer, will react as the Hindu did, and smash the Christian. Why is this?

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:20)

In 1845, American Preacher Daniel A. Clark said,

Wicked men hate the light, because it exposes his vileness. When the cellar has been shut up for years is first laid open, by the opening of knows and doors, it presents a disgusting sight. We wonder how so much filth could have accumulated there. So the dark and wicked heart of man seems unutterably vile and loathsome when God’s Word and Spirit enters into it.

Wicked men hate the light, because it shows the necessity of a better character. The soul in love with sin is agonized with an apprehension of the necessity of reformation. Sinful habits let go their hold with a wonderful reluctance. They cry out, “let us alone,” and they are expelled, just like the demons who were driven out by our Savior. The contrast which exists between good and bad men is painful to the wicked just as it is perceived.

(source, The American National Preacher, Volumes 19-22, 1845)

But there is good news too. John 3 continues from verse 20 to verse 21,

“But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

It cannot be stated strongly enough or more times than necessary….
“The Bible makes it clear that those who are genuinely saved are righteous and holy. They still sin, but with decreasing frequency. A true believer hates his sin (cf., Rom. 7:15-25) and repents of it, hungering and thirsting for what is right. He obeys God, loves his brother, and hates the evil world system. No one can be a Christian and continue living the way he did before he knew Christ. Making a decision years ago, going to an inquiry room, walking an aisle, or reading a tract on how to accept Christ is not a biblical criterion for salvation–the issue is what your life is like right now. If sin and unrighteousness characterize your life, there is a possibility you are a disobedient Christian–but there is a greater possibility you are not a Christian at all.”~John MacArthur

One who lives in a constant state of pride is perishing. And the devil loves that.

Here is a great follow up to James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries’ concern over Rick Warren’s capitulation to Rome part 1. He examines the Judaizers of Galatians and shows that even a minute change in the Gospel of Christ is a total abandonment of that Gospel. The strongest language in the New Testament is spoken against those who pervert the Gospel. Compared to much of today’s professing Christianity, the Judaizers look extremely conservative and even almost orthodox, and yet Rome makes the Judaizers look like amateurs in perverting Christ’s Gospel.

The video is 14 minutes and White also has good words for how to comment on the situation (hint: not angrily nor arrogantly) and he also expresses a biblical stance on why we should be concerned when we do speak up over these matters.

To understand what the Bible teaches about genuine salvation we must also have a category in our minds for false conversion. Many who profess faith in Christ are not truly regenerated (born again).

The following is a transcript from an excerpt of a sermon by Dr. R. C. Sproul concerning Mark chapter 4 and the Parable of the Sower. Quoting the text Dr. Sproul says:

And the ones sown on stony ground are those who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness; but they have no root and endure only for a time…

What I see here theologically is a vivid description of “the Spurious Conversion.” We see it all the time, where the Evangelist gives his altar call and the people rush to the front of the Church, sign the commitment card, they raise their hand, they make the profession of faith, they are all excited, they are filled with joy and the next day its “business as usual”…

I’ll never forget the night I was converted to Christ. My best friend and I were together. Before we went to bed, later that night we both sat down and wrote to our girlfriends about our conversion. When we woke up in the morning, my friend had completed repudiated what he had embraced with joy the night before – where my life was changed forever.

Its always haunted me, where I see people initially respond to the gospel but it doesn’t take root, it doesn’t last. The gospel says “immediately” that seed withers and dies because it has no place to take root.

Then Jesus said that some of those of the seed fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it and it yielded no crop.

Again we see an example of a spurious conversion – how somebody who makes the profession of faith but is immediately intoxicated by the enticements of this world – the quest of money, fame, lust, whatever it is; and what they professed is choked out, never taking root again.

Beloved this is why, until you’re tired of hearing it, I keep warning you and telling you that no one was ever, ever justified by a profession of faith. We must possess that faith in order to be justified. That seed has to take root in our hearts if we are to enter the kingdom of God. A superficial profession of faith is no sign of true redemption.

One of the most ghastly doctrines that has made its way through the Evangelical Church today is this idea of the “carnal Christian.” The Carnal Christian is described as a person who is truly redeemed but whose life never brings forth fruit. Even though they’re saved they are still altogether and completely carnal. Don’t confuse this with what the New Testament teaches about the TRULY converted Christian who has to fight against his flesh all of his life. But there’s no such thing as a Christian who is totally carnal. It’s a contradiction in terms.

But why does that doctrine emerge? I’ll tell you where it comes from. It comes from Evangelists who can’t stand to admit the idea that they are dealing with false professions all the time. They see people who make the profession and have no change in their life and they say “well, we’ll still count them as converts. They’re just carnal Christians.” And this gives confidence to people who are not converted that in fact they are converted.

But if the parable really is going to be called the parable of the soil, then we have to understand the ONLY ONES who bring forth fruit, the harvest of thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold, are those where the seed falls upon good soil.

Now here’s where we have to be very, very careful. We could say “well the good soil means that the seed is not going to take root unless the person who receives that seed, who hears that word is a good person. “I’m a Christian because I believed the word and the reason why I believe the word is because I am a good man.” If that’s how I think, I’ve never received the word at all.

That’s not the point of this parable.

What makes the soil “good” soil?

Again it drives us back to that question that we hear all the time in theology, “why does one person receive the word of God in their heart and another person doesn’t?”

Is it because there is something more righteous in the person who receives it than in the person who rejects it? That’s the majority view out there, believe it or not. Some people think that the reason they’re Christians is because OUT OF THEIR OWN WILL, they made the right decision, they embraced Christ, where their friends, hardened their hearts and did not use their will to embrace the gospel. And that person therefore has something in which to boast, and to boast eternally, because they said ‘yes.’

No. The Scriptures tell us… Jesus tells us clearly that unless a man is born again he can’t even see the kingdom of God. He can’t enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus told His disciples in John chapter 6 ‘nobody can come to Him unless it is given to him by the Father.’ Paul emphasizes that in his letter to the Ephesians when he says, ‘you hath he quickened.. when you were dead in trespasses and sin. By grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.’

What makes the soil good is the immediate, supernatural work on the soul by God, the Holy Spirit. The only people who ever embrace the word of God are those who have first been changed by the Holy Ghost TO receive the word of God.

What I’m saying, get it clear, is that your regeneration comes before your faith. The Holy Spirit has to change your heart before you will ever say ‘yes’ to Jesus. And that’s the power of the sower, because the sower prepares the soil to receive the seed.

That’s why we say ‘salvation is of the Lord’ and to Him and to Him alone belongs the glory.

This is hard to understand. But if you have ears to hear, you will hear it.

“Friends, this is what Christianity is about; it is not about being a church member or going to church and never or seldom reading God’s word. It is about the sacrifice of ourselves, our own well being that we might reach out to others…a perfect sacrifice. Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Churches this morning are going to be filled to capacity with people who do not know Christ….and they are ‘a stench in God’s nostrils.'”~Steve Lawson

Amen Pastor Lawson.

Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

It Will Cost You Everything.

This sermon by Steve Lawson concerns what genuine and sacrificial discipleship to Jesus Christ requires. What is it costing you? No, I mean really…

This came to me at a time when I really, I mean REALLY needed it (thank you Tammy)…I am including both the Sermon Audio link, and the link to the PDF transcript. If you listen to or read nothing else I post here…let it be this one. The truth spoken, about God’s love, Pastor Washers love for his wife compared to God’s love for His own….

This sermon is about an hour long, the transcript is long as well, although a quick read….but don’t rush through it…take it all in. Do you want God to make time for you? Do you want Him to relish your company? He does. Do you take time with Him? Do you relish His company? Take the time. Seek the Lord while He may be found.~AGM†

Excerpt: “You put yourself in so many dangerous places. You put your eyes on so many dangerous things. You open up your ears to so many things that can hurt you terribly, he is calling you away from that. You have got to understand something. When God calls us away from sin it is not like a prison guard or a task master or a cold, vile school marm who wants to break us in half and make us disciplined to a rule. No, it is a father calling a child away from the edge of a cliff. It is a lover calling his love away from lust that can destroy and rape and pillage and do harm that cannot be undone. It is a voice of love. It is broken. It is cracking. It is saying, “Come, stay away from that. Get away from that. Please get away from that. Don’t take another step. Come back.” There are so many things out there that want to destroy you and can destroy you and he is calling you away from them. He has given you his Word as a means of discerning that which is evil so that you would run from it like the plague and discerning that which is good, so that you would cleave to it like a lover. His Word has not been set upon you just to drive you in the ground or make you some type of slave that knows nothing of a personal relationship. His Word has been given to you to save you and to bring you joy and to bring you in communion with him. And it is so important that you discern that Word….”

May the Lord be your first Love, and in that, may you know that He loves you more than you can comprehend. The cross proved that…but His love doesn’t end there. Not by a long shot. ❤

“…sometimes believers do not hear enough something that is clear throughout all of Scripture and it is found in these verses right here. “You are altogether beautiful, my darling, And there is no blemish in you.”3Because the one who has saved you has made you this way. He has declared you to be like this. He shed his blood for you. If you are a Christian here tonight and you are struggling against sin and you desire passionately to please Christ and be a blessing to him and you mourn so often when you look in the mirror and you see all the ways in which you come short, sometimes you need to hear this, that when he looks at you he sees no blemish because he himself has put away your blemishes with his own scars, with his own wounds, with the wrath of God that he took on that cross in your place….”

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

How many of us are guilty of building our own path to heaven?

There are very few people alive who do not want to go to heaven. Most do but don’t want God to be there when they arrive.

I have met a few poor souls who want to go to hell, because they think in their folly, that they will party, drink and have sex for eternity.

But most struggle and strive to build their tower out of their own works and effort in order to find their way into heaven.

Shouldn’t we rely on the source of the One who said how to get to heaven rather than trying to make up our own solutions? Jesus Christ…yes Him. He is the most hated Man in the world. More people hate Him, than all the murderers, rapists, terrorists and used-car salesmen put together.

The name of Jesus evokes anger, hostility, defensiveness and pride. No wonder people don’t want to have anything to do with Him. He cramps their style!

BUT…Jesus is the source of all truth. In fact He is truth. He said that no man can go to heaven except he enter through one specific door. That door being…yep, you guessed it…Jesus Christ Himself.

All these people, whether they be just plain sinners, atheists, agnostics, feminist butches, homosexuals, philosophy professors…it makes no difference. Every man, woman and child, attempts to make his own rules and breaks others as he is able.

Every person builds his own way to heaven on the foundation of self. Whether it be:

Prideful Self

Atheistic Self

Agnostic Self

Religious Self…it makes no difference. All self is wrong and will end someone up in hell at the end of the line.

Your tower is supposed to be built on Christ Jesus. Your tower is supposed to be built by God–not you.

God doesn’t like self-reliance. For relying on self means not relying on God. Dependance on self means not depending on God.

Everybody in America is born again, and the reason why they’re born again is because of most of the preachers and pastors who do not understand the Gospel nor the power of the Gospel and that we’ve reduced the Gospel down to four spiritual laws and five things God wants you to know. We have done the very same thing that Catholicism has done since its beginning—turned salvation into nothing more than a few little steps and a superstitious prayer at the end, turned salvation into nothing more than a mere human decision whereby a man decides for himself simply to jump out of the line going into Hell in order to jump into the line going to Heaven.

But when you grasp the power of regeneration, everything else begins to fall in place and until you grasp the power of regeneration, you cannot understand the doctrine and the calling to self denial.

Let me just give you an example …another little definition I’ve written about man.

Man is a fallen, radically depraved, spiritually dead, morally corrupt, sin-loving, God-hating creature. In the very core of his being, he is as opposed to God as the devil himself. He cannot change and has no desire to do so. He loves a lie and will do everything in his power to restrain and suppress any and every truth about God and the more he knows about God, the more he hates Him, because God is righteous and man is evil.

Now, how do you take something like that, how do you expect a creature like that to all of a sudden hear a Gospel message of self-denial and turn his back on absolutely everything he is and at all cost follow the Christ? How can you expect a man to take a journey of a thousand miles if he’s neither willing nor able to take the first step? And this idea of, well, as the brother put it, “Well, let’s get them saved and then gradually introduce them to salvation and to discipleship and to the call to self-denial.” But I want to tell you something. It is not any easier to coax a dead man to take one step than it is to coax him to take a million. If he’s dead, he’s dead. And within that is found the power of regeneration.

Because I, as a preacher, an itinerant, nothing, little preacher, because of my belief in the power of the Gospel and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, I can look at the most defiled man on the face of the earth and tell him to forsake his mother, his father, his lands, his home, his own life, and I can expect that, out of the group of them, somebody’s coming out. I do not have to lay down the bar on the Gospel. I can bid men to come and die from the very moment I speak with them because I believe in the power of resurrection.

Someone says, “How can you expect a man to do that?” I say, “Well, let me answer that with another question. How can Ezekiel command bones to live? And how can Jesus cry out to a dead man and tell him to come forth?” Because salvation is not just some mere, tiny, puny, human decision.
It is the supernatural work of God.

“Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? – Luke 18:8”

"One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple." Psalm 27:4

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. –Matthew 7:15-23, KJV”

“If anyone advocates a different doctrine, and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. –1 Timothy 6:3-5”

If I have in any way violated a copyright or not given appropriate credit to an author please forgive me. It was done innocently and in ignorance. Contact me if there is a problem and I will be glad to remove or edit it as desired.